One year ago: Herbert G. Klein

Herbert G. Klein made his career in two often competing worlds: journalism and politics. The longtime San Diego resident and USC graduate started out as a political reporter but went on to become press secretary for President Richard Nixon and the first White House director of communications. He died one year ago Friday.

"Journalism has been my profession, and politics have been an avocation," Klein said on the occasion of his retirement in 2003.

It was as a special correspondent for Copley that Klein covered Nixon's 1946 run for Congress, getting a taste for the interaction between politicians and the press. He quit his newspaper positions to serve as press secretary for Nixon's failed campaigns for the White House against John F. Kennedy in 1960 and for the California governorship in 1962. Klein was still there when Nixon finally won the presidency six years later.

Klein parted ways with the president he had supported for three decades a year before Nixon's 1974 resignation, settling into his longtime role as editor of Copley Newspapers.

For more, read Herbert Klein's obituary by The Times.

-- Michael Farr

Photo: Herbert G. Klein. Credit: Alexander Gallardo / Los Angeles Times

Wanted: curious obit writers

In a recent column Jim George, managing editor of the Honolulu-based Pacific Business Journal, tells readers about how he tried to train a young reporter on the obit beat while working at an afternoon newspaper in the 1970s.

Obituaries were a vital part of our afternoon paper. Funeral directors would phone the obit writer and dictate information — this was before faxes and e-mail — which the reporter would turn into a story. Our afternoon newspaper would often get up to 20 obits during a morning shift.

Obit writing required speed and a passion for detail and accuracy. It also was the most boring beat imaginable.

Paul hated it. He had come to town to expose wrongdoing, not to be a glorified clerk. I told him to complete one week of error-free obit writing and I would move him to more exciting work.

He couldn’t do it. Errors continued and his tenure on the obit beat lengthened. He blamed me.

One day, about mid-morning, Paul turned in an obit about the death of a 30-year-old man.

"What did he die of?" I asked.

"I don’t know," Paul replied.

"Thirty-year-olds don’t die for no reason," I answered. "Find out the cause of death."

To find out what happened next, read the rest of Jim George's column. And let me say I don't think this beat is at all boring. But I do agree that speed, accuracy and an eye for detail are pluses.

-- Claire Noland

L.A. journalist Jerry Clark dies at 70

Jerry Clark, 70, a reporter for the old Los Angeles Mirror newspaper and Times staff member who in retirement was chairman of a loose gathering of former Los Angeles newspaper men and women, died suddenly Tuesday morning at his home in Glendale, said his niece Joni Clark.

The cause was not immediately known, but he had diabetes and heart problems.

Jerry Clark was a police reporter at the Los Angeles Mirror, an afternoon tabloid owned by The Times. After the Mirror folded in 1962, he worked for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, City News Service and The Times, where he was a proofreader and held various production posts. He retired in 1993.

He also was affiliated with the Southern California Sports Broadcasters, was a past president of the L.A. Press Club, and was chairman of the so-called Old Farts Society of retired L.A. journalists.

"Jerry was the one who kept us all together," said retired photojournalist Bonnie Burrow.

In one of his last mass e-mails to the group, Clark passed on the news that former Times staff writer Sue Avery, who primarily worked in the San Gabriel Valley suburban section, had died May 26.

Born Jan. 27, 1940, in Los Angeles, Clark attended Glendale College and served in the Army.

Survivors include his brother John.

Services are pending.

-- Claire Noland

Photo: Jerry Clark

P.J. O'Rourke takes aim at obits

... as only he can do. In an essay for the Weekly Standard, the inimitable satirist offers this suggestion for saving the struggling newspaper industry:

What I propose is "Pre-Obituaries" — official notices that certain people aren’t dead yet accompanied by brief summaries of their lives indicating why we wish they were.

The main advantage of the Pre-Obit over the traditional obituary is the knowledge of reader and writer alike that the as-good-as-dead people are still around to have their feelings hurt. It was a travesty of literary justice that we waited until J. D. Salinger finally hit the delete key at 91 before admitting that Catcher in the Rye stinks. The book’s only virtue is that it captures, with annoying accuracy, the maunderings of a twerp. The book’s only pleasure is in slamming the cover shut — simpler than slamming the door shut on a real Holden Caulfield, if less satisfying. The rest of Salinger’s published oeuvre was precious or boring or both. But we felt constrained to delay saying so, perhaps because of an outdated Victorian hope for a death-bed flash of genius.

Click here to read about his nominees for such Pre-Obits.

And in case you're unfamiliar with O'Rourke, here's how he explained his brand of humor in the new book "Satiristas!: Comedians, Contrarians, Raconteurs & Vulgarians" by Paul Provenza and Dan Dion, which was featured in The Times a few weeks ago:

That's the thing I've always loved about humor, that there's a strong element of irresponsibility to it. Our job is to be irresponsible. My job is to turn on the lights in the dirty kitchen and watch the roaches scurry, which is fun. It's not my job to step on them; it's not my job to put Borax in the cupboards. I just turn on the lights and watch them scurry.

You're never going to do a show for the Black Panthers that gets them to kiss and make up with the Aryan Brotherhood; we're just comedians, we're not miracle workers. But it's not like we're completely useless when it comes to decency or making people think about stuff.

-- Claire Noland

Photo: P.J. O'Rourke. Credit: Dan Dion / HarperCollins

Alicia Parlette, 28, copy editor who wrote about her cancer for the San Francisco Chronicle

Writing about those who die much too young is always one of the harder assignments. Reading about them isn’t much easier. With a silent nod to Alicia Parlette’s inner strength, I read the San Francisco Chronicle’s obituary for one of their own. Parlette, a copy editor who was diagnosed with a rare cancer at 23, died Thursday. She was 28.

She wrote about her struggle with the illness in a 17-part Chronicle series called “Alicia’s Story.” In an early installment, she observed:

 If I get through this, this story will help me remember the important moments along the way, the details, the dizzying emotions. And, in the worst of all circumstances, if I go through this life-changing ordeal and my body just wears out and I die, I will die a writer. The one thing I’ve always wanted to be.

Her heart-breaking words reminded me of Mary Herczog, a freelance writer who poignantly, and often humorously, chronicled her struggle with breast cancer in a nine-part series for The Times. Diagnosed with cancer at 33, Herczog died in February at 45.

-- Valerie J. Nelson

Grief process: 1992 vs. 2010

If you're reading the Afterword blog, you're probably interested in obituaries. So if you don't yet know about Obit magazine's website, you should check it out. Besides linking to interesting news obituaries, Obit  presents essays about death and dying, grief and mourning, and other related issues. They are often compelling reading.

A recent article by Suzanne Strempek Shea titled "Paying Respects" examines the differences between how her family went about alerting the world of her father's death in 1992 and that of her father-in-law two months ago. She focuses on the technological changes that have occurred in the interim.

My first hint of a new era came that first day when I reached for the cell phone to tell a dear friend the news. But she’d already left me a message, having learned of the death just a few hours after it happened and from an ocean away. Someone in the States had relayed word via e-mail to friends in Ireland, my father-in-law’s birthplace.

Several e-mailed my friend to ask what she knew. And now she was phoning me to offer condolences.

Back in 1992, I sat on the floor by the regular old land line, working my way through the family phone book. Here in 2010, choruses of ring tones informed us of more messages and texts piling up. "We just heard," said the callers. "We R with U," read the lines.

Read the rest of the essay here and see what she has to say about online obituaries and the etiquette of offering condolences.

-- Claire Noland

Down the rabbit hole of paid obits

Some readers of the obituary page make it a daily stop as they cruise through the newspaper or the website. Judging by the feedback we receive, they peruse the offerings for different reasons. Some want to see who is the latest famous person to die; others are looking for a neighbor or loved one; still others know that even if they hadn't heard of the deceased before they may learn something new or simply enjoy a good story.

In this department we cover people who were newsmakers during their lifetime. Alongside the news obituaries are the paid obituaries, or death notices, placed by family members or close friends. Because they are not news stories, these accounts can include whatever information the deceased's loved ones wish to include and they can exclude whatever they like. It's how the family wants the person to be remembered. I have clipped and saved several newspaper paid obits about my family members, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

And even if the subject of a paid obit is not someone near and dear to you, the thumbnail sketches of lives lived can be fascinating and turn into daily required reading.

Santa Rosa Press Democrat columnist Gaye Lebaron is a devoted reader of paid obits, as Lebaron explains in this recent column:

As a habitual reader of obituaries — even those that announce the passing of strangers — I have found that the traditional death notice, wherever it appears, is almost always a window into history.

It’s not always local history. Part of being a dedicated newspaper junkie is reading the obit page in the dailies (and weeklies) we buy wherever our travels take us. If you’re staying a day or two, you can probably discern some east-to-west migration patterns.

These patterns are becoming less distinct as a younger, vastly more mobile population churns in all directions from the home base established by their elders.

You can read the rest of the column here. Ignore the tired old dig at L.A.

-- Claire Noland